


Since you've been here

by evilythedwarf



Series: All the songs make sense [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Movie Stars, actors!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 10:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3806302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry is sick and Emma and Regina take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since you've been here

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Movie Stars! AU, but now I have a laptop again and the bigger sequel, which comes before this story, actually, should be out in a month or so!
> 
> The title, the entire story really, was inspred by Nina Simone's version of Here Comes the Sun, whch is amazing and you should all listen to it if you have a chance.
> 
> Thank you for your patience!

There are many, many things you love about your apartment, but it being a walk up is not precisely one of them. Especially when you’ve walked all the way from the drugstore. Especially when you’re wearing wet clothes, and you’re hair is plastered to your skull because the rain was so heavy it soaked through your beanie. Especially when you have a sick kid waiting for you at home and you can’t run up the stairs because your arms are so full you can’t see where you’re going.

 

You set one of your bags on the floor, carefully trying not to tip the containers of hot soup you’ve been carrying for 5 blocks. You take your keychain from your back pocket and hold your gloves with your teeth, and the keys are so cold you almost drop them.

 

When you finally get the door open, the apartment is dim, all the light coming from the streetlamps outside. Regina is standing in the middle of the living room, swinging gently with Henry on her arms, his skinny legs hanging off her sides. She must not have put him down since you left the apartment.

 

He starts to whimper and you scramble to drop all your stuff on the kitchen table but Regina shushes him gently. She runs a hand through his messy, sweaty hair and then she starts to sing.

 

Henry quiets, and you see his tiny hand tighten around the strap of Regina’s tank. You don’t recognize the song at first, mostly because there’s not much n the way of a tune but the lyrics are familiar enough that it only takes you a second. Regina’s voice is a lot more Nina Simone than George Harrison, but that’s definitely Here comes the sun, and it’s doing funny things to your insides.

 

You finish getting everything out of the bags and leave it on top of the kitchen table. The soup needs to be reheated anyway, and everything else can wait. You get out of your wet coat and leave it in the back of a chair to deal with later.

 

You turn on the kitchen lights and measure out Henry’s antibiotics, and you hope he doesn’t fall asleep. He needs to rest, but you don’t want to have to wake him up. Regina continues to rock him, humming softly.

 

“Hey,” you say, as low as you can manage, hoping Henry doesn’t hear. She nods at you and tries to smile but you can see how tired she is. “I’m sorry,” you mouth.

 

She shakes her head, just a little, as to not disturb the kid.

 

You walk up to them and lay your hand on his back. He turns to look at you. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, and he drinks his medicine without complaining about it. He sniffles pitifully and burrows against Regina’s chest, sending a pang of jealousy through your chest.

 

It’s good that he can find comfort in someone else’s arms, and you wouldn’t have left him in the first place if she wasn’t as invested in taking care of him as you are, but he has depended on you, and only you for so long and you don’t know how you’re supposed to feel now.

 

He settles quickly, but he’s no longer drowsy and whimpery. His eyes finally open all the way up.

 

“Hey mama,” he says.

 

“Come here,” you tell him, taking him easily. He is so hot, even though he is wearing nothing but pajama pants and an undershirt, dressed like a tiny octogenarian, he’s still a little furnace against your cold chest.

 

“I can’t feel my arms,” Regina tells you from where she sort of crumbles on the couch. She curls up and sighs, and one of her hands starts to rub at the opposite shoulder.

 

Henry sniffs against your neck. Your kid is sick and his chest sounds like he’s got a motor engine running in there, and your girlfriend is exhausted half asleep on the couch, and your back is frozen and the front of your body is starting to sweat from the heat emanating from Henry teeny tiny body. And you feel like everything in your life has led you to this moment.

 

You sway in place, with your arms hooked under Henry’s skinny butt, while he rubs a his eyes.

 

“I don’t feel well,” he tells you, as if you didn’t know.

 

“I know, kid.”

 

Regina stirs. She lifts her head and looks at you.

 

“I don’t think the Tylenol is working,” she says.

 

You kiss Henry’s forehead, and his temperature s still too high.

 

“Come on kid,” you say, as you take him to the couch and sit him down next to Regina. He curls into her, like a cat and she wraps her tired arms around him.  “Be right back,” you tell them.

 

The thermometer is on top of your dresser. It’s been on high demand, the last couple of days, and you keep it on hand on the otherwise messy surface.

 

When you return to the living room, sitting next to them on the couch, Henry is surprisingly agreeable to having the thermometer stuck in his ear, and when it beeps, Regina checks the reading.

 

“It’s 101,” she says. It’s lower than it was before you left for the drugstore. His fever is finally coming down.

 

Regina bites her lower lip and stares at the thermometer nervously.

 

“Should we take him to the hospital anyway?” she asks you, and you honestly don’t know what to tell her. Henry has always been a healthy boy. Other than the great ear infection of 2012, he has never been as sick as he is now and part of you thinks that maybe she is right. Maybe you should take him to the ER and let medical professionals look him over again.

 

You took him to the pediatrician when you realized his cold was getting serious, and it was a good thing too, because he spiked a fever as soon as you got home, and you and Regina have been doing your best to take care of him since.

 

Rationally though, you know the antibiotics will start to take effect and he will get better soon, and you know that Regina’s worry is… complicated. She is concerned for Henry, definitely, but being neglected for most of her life, she doesn’t know how much is too much, and you don’t know how to reassure her when the less rational side of your brain is telling you to take the kid and brave the snow again to take him to the hospital.

 

“Maybe we should call the doctor?” you suggest instead. It seems like a sane, non-paranoid middle ground, right?

 

You’re about to stand up and look for the phone when Henry grabs on to you.

 

“No,” he says. “Stay here,” he mumbles, and he pushes his knees against your thighs as he makes himself comfortable.

 

Regina goes for your cell, her legs wobbly and unsteady, and you worry about her too, suddenly. She scrolls through the recent calls on your cell and then her eyes get wide as she actually makes the call.

 

“What do I say?”she stage whispers at you, but you don’t have a chance to reply before she’s shoving the phone at you anyway.

 

In the end, you are told to watch his temperature and wait. Regina sets the alarm for an hour, and you stay there on your living room couch, with all the apartment lights out and Henry sprawled across both of you until he finally falls asleep.

 

You expect Regina to nod off right after him, but instead she keeps staring at you, and you remind yourself that as tired as she is, she is terrible about actually falling asleep.

 

“What are you thinking about?” she asks you.

 

“You. Singing.”

 

She looks away and you smile.

 

“Well stop,” she says. “I’m not a good singer.”

 

“Good enough for him,” you say, resting your head next to Henry’s and your hand on his back.

 

“He’s an easy audience.”

 

“That he is.”

 

“He’s so tiny,” she says. Her hand is on the couch, inches from his back, and you see how her fingers twitch, as if she wanted to touch him.

 

“I almost didn’t keep him,” you tell her. Your voice is low, even though you know Henry is exhausted and sound asleep and can’t hear you. Regina doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t look at you. Your best conversations happen in the dark.

 

You were going to give him up, until Neal convinced you not to. He said you could do it, you could be a family, all three of you, but you don’t tell Regina that. You don’t tell her about waiting for Neal at the hospital, about the envelope with a paid hospital bill and a set of car keys and trying to fit an infant car seat on that yellow bug you used to drive, about holding Henry for the first time and not being able to let him go, even when you wondered if you were his best chance.

 

“I’m glad,” she says, and she covers your hand with hers. “I fell in love with you Emma,” she says, “but I think I fell in love with him too.”

 

In the morning, Henry’s fever breaks.


End file.
